Dean Walker Leads Collaboration to Design, Test and Produce Aerosol BioContainment Device for Medical Professionals
By Dr. James Lo
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Dean Sharon Walker is leading a collaboration between Drexel and the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) Medical School to design, test, and produce the Aerosol BioContainment Device (ABCD), an acrylic chamber with contaminant removal functions to keep front-line medical professionals safe during aerosol-generating procedures for COVID-19 patients.
Dr. Michael Waring and Dr. James Lo from CAEE have contributed in this collaboration by providing their expertise in indoor particle transport and removal. Specifically, Dr. Lo has provided computational fluid dynamic models to predict the movement of the potential contaminated particles in a clinical setting and within the chamber device, and Dr. Waring has been conducting experiments on validating the ABCD design.
Preliminary findings show the ABCD can remove more than 99% of aerosol particles and the upcoming clinical trial on real patients at Penn will further ensure the functionality and performance of the device. The design improvement and testing are ongoing, with the goal of deploying the chamber at Penn hospitals as well as future deployments to other areas of the US and internationally.
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It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia
By Dr. Eugenia Victoria Ellis, AIA
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Here I am sitting alongside the Schuylkill River while my colleague in Lecco, Italy is sunning herself by Lake Como – at least that’s what we’d like you to think!
Online teaching in the age of a global pandemic is new to most of us. For me, the transition wasn’t so hard – I had already been teaching this course synchronously with Giuliana Iannaccone at the Politecnico di Milano with half of my students in Italy, so the transition to all of my students being online was a natural segue. My philosophy behind the Global Classroom has always been to provide a milieu for our students that could help promote globalization – an easy way to do this is to make friends around the world and then visit each other! While many of our students are from around the world, many have never been out of the country, so this is a great first step for them.
My Global Classroom promotes interdisciplinary learning through project-based learning among students of different disciplines and globalization through teaming students from different countries and backgrounds. Since the world, indeed, is becoming smaller and world trade is becoming the backbone of our economy, international teamwork and working remotely to develop new ideas and inventions is likely to become part of our future. My hope is for this course to be one of the first steps a Drexel student can take on their way to their future life as a global citizen.
On the other hand, I also teach design studio for architectural engineers. High expectations were not in my vocabulary for teaching this course online. A design studio involves working closely with a student, critiquing their work, and often physically drawing over their designs with tracing paper and marker. In addition, I teach design studio through model building so students can fully experience the three-dimensional qualities of their projects. Well, how does one do that when few engineering students have ever built a model before and one cannot go to a model supply store to buy materials anyway?
Our students have totally blown me away! They have figured it out! Drexel students are driven, resourceful, and as we all know…. ambition can’t wait! The quality of their work might not be as refined as it might ordinarily be, nor does it display the craftsmanship I usually anticipate, but our students are doing an incredible job building models by using their Amazon packaging, shish kabob skewers, tooth picks, and whatever poster board they can get from the grocery store or pharmacy. And, their work is good, too...... surprisingly good, thoughtful, and inventive. While our final review is still a couple of weeks away, I have high expectations and am confident the students will have produced some very viable work by the end of the term.
So, in spite of this global pandemic, it
is
always sunny in Philadelphia!
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Capps Receives NSF CAREER Award
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"I am very grateful for this opportunity to mentor graduate students whose work will aid policy makers in improving air quality and will help urban students and the public understand air pollution and its impacts,” shares Dr. Capps. This project seeks to identify which changes would reduce the most air pollution risk by developing a new computational approach, which will also be useful for improving estimates of air pollution risk through incorporation of satellite data. This technique holds great promise to provide results more rapidly, efficiently, and economically than existing techniques. Additionally, the public will be able to access these estimates through an interactive website at science museums and in urban classrooms.
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Three CAEE Faculty Promoted to Full Professor
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Congratulations to Dr. Trish Gallagher, Dr. Patrick Gurian, and Dr. Michael Waring for being promoted to full professor, effective September 1, 2020!
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Graduate Student Spotlight: Jinje He
By Nathan Schweizer, MEM
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Environmental Engineering PhD student
Jinjie He
is working to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. Originally from the Changping district of Beijing, Jinjie decided to pursue a masters with Drexel after time spent working on wastewater treatment in rural China. “After my undergrad I worked a little bit in a company in Beijing and they did water treatment for wastewater treatment for rural area and that was a very interesting topic for me and I felt I needed to learn more because there was a lot of knowledge I was lacking.”
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Congratulations to PhD student
Mohammad Balapour
for receiving the C. Pennoni Civil Engineering Fellow Scholarship. Each year the Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering Department selects a graduate student as the recipient of this scholarship in recognition of excellent academic performance, the potential for success, and contribution to the field of Civil Engineering.
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Congratulations to
Tristan Hall
and
Megan McKenna
(pictured right)
for receiving a one-time Moles Scholarship in the amount of $6,250 for the 2020-21 academic year.
The Moles Charitable Fund provides scholarships to academically qualified and deserving students participating in the Moles education program. Junior-year, Civil Engineering students with an interest in the Heavy Construction Industry are taken into consideration for these scholarships. Other considerations include excellent academic achievement, a recommendation by the Department Head, completed services in any of the Armed Forces, and/or participation in heavy construction-related clubs.
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Asa Lewis
, a PhD student in the Sales Laboratory, recently authored a publication in
Environmental Science: Water Research and Technology
that was featured as a HOT article in the journal based off the score received by peer reviews. His work focuses on the use of plasma technologies to degrade the class of contaminants, PFAS, in water and soil matrices.
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Congratulations to
Madeleine Pelchat
(BS/MS Chemical Engineering/Environmental Engineering '21, Honors), selected for the 2020 Udall Scholarship! Maddie has been selected in recognition of her leadership, public service and commitment to issues related to the environm
ent.
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The paper entitled “
Required Water Temperature in Hotel Plumbing to Control
Legionella
Growth
” has been accepted for publication in the journal
Water Research.
Md Rasheduzzaman
, a PhD student in environmental engineering, authored the piece together
with Research Scientist Rajveer Singh, Department Head and LD Betz Chair Professor of Environmental Engineering Charles N. Haas, and Professor Patrick L. Gurian. Evidence on the association between hot water temperature and
Legionella
colonization in hotel water distribution systems was used to analyze the relationship between temperature and probability of detectable Legionella to inform water heater temperature set points, and for planning and policymaking to protect against
Legionella
spp. contamination in hotel hot water distribution systems. Legionella is an opportunistic pathogen responsible for nearly 10,000 illnesses and about 1,000 deaths annually in the United States.
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Congratulations to
Dienye Tolofari
, a PhD candidate in environmental engineering, who under the advisement of Professor Patrick Gurian, emerged the winner of the President’s Choice Award for the best “
Three Minute Thesis Presentation
.” She presented her work in building water quality entitled "Full factorial study of plumbing pipe material, pipe diameter and water use frequency on building water quality."
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